


Open Wide and Empty

by Dispatches (orphan_account)



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-11
Updated: 2010-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-09 10:07:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Dispatches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Jedi purges, one of the few survivors finds Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine, but Obi-Wan's in no mood to face the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open Wide and Empty

I

_history abandons us and we're holding on, holding on  
to nothing but dirt and dust  
we're holding on, holding on_

 

It wasn't enough to steer clear of the Empire. Every bounty hunter from wild space to the Deep Core knew that Jedi were big money, if you could find one, and many of them had found Quin, though they found death soon afterwards. Ever since the clones on Kashyyyk had blown up his transport, Quin had been alone, running or hiding or fighting. Not stopping. Not staying anywhere for long.

He had thought that perhaps here, on this dusty rock with nothing to attract anyone but those who wanted to be a long way away from everywhere else, he could find a home or at the very least a bolthole that would keep him safe for more than a few weeks; but he knew now that that thought had been a rationalization of something deeper. The Force had been blowing him around like a leaf on the wind, and he accepted that. To fight that wind was worse than futile. When his feelings brought him to Tatooine, he should have known that the Force had something more important in mind than his own rest.

Jedi attracted each other. Even when there had been thousands of them, they had been spread out among the galaxy so that a Jedi could travel through system after system for years and not meet a brother or sister, yet when they did meet there was a force that drew them to each other, like gravitation pulling planets into the orbit of stars. The Force had drawn him to Tatooine, and once he had landed there everything he did brought him closer to that small hermitage on the edge of the Dune Sea where Obi-Wan Kenobi had made his home.

When he arrived at last at Obi-Wan's door, the first thing Obi-Wan said was "Quin? Stars' end, Quin, are you alive?"

"Last time I checked," he said. He stood just beyond the threshold, drinking in the sight of Obi-Wan, still alive, _still alive_, whole and unhurt and not so very much older than he had been the last time Quin saw him. There were shadows in his eyes that had not always been there, and he carried himself with a slight stoop as if his back hurt, but he was real and he was solid and he was a beacon in the Force, just as he always had been.

Obi-Wan stared too. "You haven't changed," he said in a wondering voice. "Have I changed? I feel as if I must have aged a hundred years."

"No," said Quin. "No, you're still the same. As much as I am, anyway." And that was true, too. Quin's soul had shadows and flames in it worse than anything Obi-Wan knew, and the purges had darkened the shadows and heated the flames, but very little of that showed in his face. No less than Obi-Wan's own sorrows showed, but no more.

"Well," said Obi-Wan. He stared for another long moment, then seemed to remember himself and stood back from the threshold. "You should come in. You should stay -- "

Quin shook his head. "I can't stay long, Obi-Wan."

Obi-Wan nodded. "Of course, of course. I didn't mean for long, just -- come in for a drink?"

Quin stepped inside. "That shouldn't do any harm." On impulse, he reached out, gripped Obi-Wan's arm. Obi-Wan mirrored the gesture, and for a heartbeat they stood that way, linked in a not-quite-embrace, their eyes locked.

"You mustn't stay too long," Obi-Wan said, but as soon as he said it, he pulled Quin into his arms and held him close.

 

II

 

_for every breath that leaves me now another comes to fill me   
and for every death that grieves me now the next will surely kill me_

 

Obi-Wan's home was sparse but comfortable, carved out of the rocks on the edge of the Dune Sea. It made Quin smile to see how Obi-Wan had made his little hermitage as similar as possible to his quarters in the Temple.

"Once a Jedi, always a Jedi, eh?" he said, waving his hand at the bare walls and simple furnishings as he sat down on a carved stone bench.

Obi-Wan stiffened. "I don't know about that," he said mildly, taking a bottle out of a cupboard. "Dooku was a Jedi once."

Quin winced and ground his teeth. "Dooku..." A flood of memories invaded his mind, and for a second he let them overwhelm him. So many dead, so many lives blighted, so much work and pain and sacrifice, and for what? He had come within a hair's breadth of falling -- no, he _had_ fallen, and just barely managed to scrape his way back into the light. And Dooku was dead now, but that made no difference.

Obi-Wan sat down opposite him and handed him a glass of something dark. "Perhaps we shouldn't talk about the past," he said.

Quin sniffed the dark stuff and took a sip: it smelled sweet, but on his tongue it was rich and smoky. "What else can we talk about? What else do we _have_? I don't know about you, but my life is pretty blank at the moment, and I don't see that changing any time soon."

"You should look around more," said Obi-Wan. "There is an infinity of riches in everyday life."

"Even here?"

"Even here. The stars, for instance. On Coruscant I never saw the stars. Too much light pollution. But here, they shine so brightly most nights, you can almost read by them. And the sunsets! A Tatooine sunset is a sight worth travelling for."

Quin took another sip of his liquor. "And this -- what is this, anyway?"

"Tavek. A local drink, made from cactus sap."

"I like it."

They lapsed into silence, and Quin passed his glass from hand to hand. He didn't want to talk about what he had lost -- what they had both lost; and yet he had not followed a whisper of the Force all the way to Tatooine only to talk about sunsets and drink fermented cactus sap.

"What happened to us?" he murmured, not expecting an answer.

Obi-Wan shifted in his seat. "Us?"

"The Republic. The Jedi. You and me, Obi-Wan -- we were strong once. We had a purpose, even if I -- even if it sometimes slipped out of reach. Now we barely even exist. How did we fall so far?"

"Have we fallen? Is that what's really happened?"

"Obi-Wan..."

"If we are not as high as we used to be, that does not necessarily mean that we have fallen. Only that the universe has shifted. The Force has decided it can do without us." He closed his eyes. Quin noticed that there were lines around them that had not been there before. "We have been humbled," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "We were proud, and we were shocked out of our pride. We were offered a bait too tempting to resist, and we did not realise it was poisoned until it was too late." He opened his eyes. Their expression was neutral, not accusatory in the slightest, but it pierced Quin to the core. "We were deceived, because the lie was easier to believe than a truth that would have made us look foolish or weak. We lost the way, because to take the true path would have been to admit that we had been the tools of those who were weaker than us. We walked in darkness, and our eyes adapted, and we told ourselves that we were still in the light."

Quin set down his glass to keep from cracking it in his hand. "Did you feel them die?" he said.

Obi-Wan knocked back his tavek in one swallow. "I _still_ feel them die. In my dreams, the Temple burns and the Jedi are cut down, every night since my own troops turned on me."

"Then how can you say such things? How can you blame them -- blame _us_? We were caught in a trap! There was no way to avoid it!"

"No," said Obi-Wan, filling his glass again, "you've got me wrong. I don't blame us. I don't think any of us could have done much of anything to stop it. Any more than we could stop night from falling."

"But you said -- "

"Were we not proud? Were we not deceived? You of all people should know that we were not seen by others as we saw ourselves." Obi-Wan shook his head. "I've had a lot of quiet days and sleepless nights to think about this. By the time the trap had sprung on us, it was too late. If we had realised -- but we never had a chance. Palpatine made sure of that. Yet we... we made mistakes. We strayed, and not because we were forced to. Why did we leap into war so eagerly? Was it because it was easier to make war on an enemy we could see than to combat the darkness in our own hearts?"

Quin slapped the table. "Enough!"

There was a silence that stretched out until even Quin was uncomfortable. "You're right," he said, rubbing his face. "You're right much too often for your own good, you know."

Obi-Wan snorted. "It's not much consolation, all things considered." He reached out and took hold of each of Quin's hands with one of his own, lowering them from Quin's face. "What's really bothering you, Quin?"

Quin opened his mouth, closed it, blinked, shook his head. "I felt Aayla die," he said. A salty tang joined the smoky richness of the tavek on his tongue, and he realised he was crying. "Of all of them -- even -- we were made to forget each other, forget that we had ever known each other, and still -- "

Obi-Wan's eyes darkened. "The bond between Master and Padawan is never truly broken."

"Did you feel Anakin die?"

Obi-Wan closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were glistening. "Yes," he said, and the tears overflowed and ran down his cheeks.

Quin dashed a tear away from his own eye, then reached out to touch the wet trails on Obi-Wan's face. "A long time ago," he said, "I was travelling. Not going anywhere in particular. Just travelling. And I met an old woman in a village who was selling little charms -- spells. Harmless, but ineffective. One of the things she had on her stall was a bottle of something clear. 'Jedi tears', she said, 'very rare, very precious. A sovereign remedy for any sorrow or suffering.'"

Obi-Wan smiled, though the tears did not stop. "Did you offer to replenish her supply?"

Quin laughed, and the feeling was so unfamiliar that it took him a moment to realise that the sound was, indeed, laughter. "I asked her if they worked if you _were_ a Jedi..."

"What did she say?"

Quin's smile faded. "She said, 'No, for the Jedi weep so that others need not.'" His hand shifted to cup Obi-Wan's cheek. "Do you think that was ever true?"

Obi-Wan stroked the back of Quin's hand. "We always made sacrifices that were not expected of others. Family, home, love."

"And what was it all for, in the end? What good did it do us? What good did it do the universe?"

Obi-Wan clasped Quin's hand. "Stay with me tonight."

"I shouldn't -- "

"Stay with me."

Quin leaned forward and touched Obi-Wan's forehead with his own. "I want to."

"Then do." Obi-Wan turned his face to kiss Quin's palm. "Please."

There were several reasons why they shouldn't do this. Quin thought about those reasons as he tilted his head and kissed Obi-Wan: the longer he stayed, the more tempting a target the two of them would make for bounty hunters or Imperial enforcers; he could be ruining Obi-Wan's grieving process, and his own; it was one more Jedi habit to break, and if he broke them all, what would be left between his soul and the darkness?

But against all that, here they were: alive, alive, perhaps the only ones still alive. He pulled away and licked his lips. "Just one night," he said.

Obi-Wan nodded.

 

III

_don't speak without thinking  
don't sleep with a stranger when you're drinking  
don't get on a ship when it's sinking_

 

It was awkward at first -- no surprise there after long months alone, sleeping in narrow beds, keeping thoughts of desire so far from the surface that he rarely even felt the need to masturbate -- but he felt emboldened by the sight of his own uncertainties reflected in Obi-Wan's eyes, and in the hesitant way he pulled the sheet back from the bed, glancing from Quin to the lamp and raising his eyebrows.

Quin shook his head. He wanted to engage all his senses, wanted them to flood him with the _now_ and drive away every memory of the past. Yet when Obi-Wan answered with a nod and began to strip, he found he couldn't watch. He turned aside and pulled off his clothes as if he were alone, but it was only when he was down to his shorts that he felt Obi-Wan's eyes on him. He swallowed, pushed the shorts down, stepped out of them, and turned around.

Obi-Wan was naked, sitting with one foot on the floor and the other drawn up onto the bed, his eyes intent on Quin's body. Quin felt a flicker of desire and his Jedi training kicked in, started to dismantle that desire and release it into the Force, but he stopped himself. This desire would do no harm. This desire could be embraced. He licked his lips, thinking of the prickly softness of Obi-Wan's beard against his chin, the slow, gentle caress Obi-Wan had laid on the back of his hand.

Obi-Wan stood up and moved towards him, his eyes sweeping over Quin, leaving trails of fire erupting just beneath the surface of his skin. Quin was rooted to the spot, mesmerised by the sight of Obi-Wan's body -- he had never seen it before, not like this, would he not remember? The trail of fine red-gold hairs leading down from Obi-Wan's navel to his stiffening cock -- would he not remember that? The heat of Obi-Wan's body, skin so close to his that they were almost touching -- would he not remember that?

Desire flared up like a brushfire in his belly, spreading upwards and downwards until his cock was rigid and his skin was crawling, itching, aching with the need to touch and be touched, and yet he could not move. It was Obi-Wan who moved, raising his hand almost tentatively to touch Quin's chest, and with that touch the spell was broken and Quin could raise his own hands to cradle Obi-Wan's head, run his fingers through his sun-bleached hair, pull Obi-Wan's mouth close to his for a kiss.

He wasn't consciously trying to back Obi-Wan over to the bed, but when they reached it, still kissing, Obi-Wan dragging his fingers up and down Quin's spine in a maddening caress, Quin pulled back as if this had been his plan all along and gave Obi-Wan a gentle push in the chest. Obi-Wan took the hint and fell back onto the bed, scrambling backwards to make room for Quin, his tongue sticking out a little and his fingers digging into the mattress.

Quin took a deep breath and crawled over the bed towards him, keeping his legs apart and bracing himself on his arms so that they barely touched until he had lined his body up with Obi-Wan's in exactly the right way. He dipped his head for a quick kiss first, then lowered his body slowly till they were sliding against each other, chest to chest, cock to cock, legs entwining. Obi-Wan gasped and his hands clutched at Quin's sides; Quin sucked in a breath and shuddered, because he _remembered_ \-- no, no, he didn't remember, his mind didn't remember, but he knew this feeling, this -- he closed his eyes to focus his other senses: the slick heat of Obi-Wan's erection pulsing against his; the sound of his fast breathing and low, bitten-back moans; the smell of his hair when it was damp with sweat and sticking to his forehead; the taste (he dipped his head again, licking randomly, catching the spot where Obi-Wan's shoulder connected with his neck) of his skin, its smoothness against his tongue --

\-- he knew this, all of it, his mind had forgotten but his body knew it all --

\-- and he opened his eyes and saw his desire and the memory of his desire reflected in Obi-Wan's gaze. He reached out with his mind, touching his thoughts to Obi-Wan's, not with words, but with his senses: _feel what I feel, let me feel what you feel_. Obi-Wan bit his lip and his hands stilled on Quin's back for a moment, but he let his barriers slide down and then they were flooding each other, pleasure feeding into pleasure and heat multiplying with heat until it was too much for either of them and in the same breath, the same heartbeat, they came together.

 

IV

_while those borders crumble every day, the faultlines are showing  
and all i thought was here to stay slowly is going_

 

Afterwards, Quin fell into a deep and restful sleep. He awoke feeling light, as if he had been carrying something heavy for so long he had forgotten what it was like to be unburdened. He pulled away from Obi-Wan gently, not wanting to wake him; he, too, was sleeping like a child who had never known fear.

Quin pulled his pants on and wandered outside to watch the suns rise. An infinity of riches, Obi-Wan had said, as if he really believed it. Did Obi-Wan watch the suns rise and set every day, this sudden outpouring of gold across the sky? It reminded him of an old Jedi fable, a tale told to younglings who went through phases of craving possessions: a sage living in a remote hermitage was visited in the night by a burglar. Without protest, he let the burglar take everything he had that was of value, which was not very much, and the burglar left without hurting him. When he had gone, the sage stepped outside and watched the sun rise. "Ah!" said the sage, "how I wish I could give that burglar this beautiful sunrise!"

He had never really understood that story, but then he had never understood the way people wasted their energy scrabbling after mere _things_, so perhaps he had never needed to understand it. Still, the thought of it soothed him.

His stomach growled, and he stretched and went back inside. He was hunting through cupboards for something edible when his hand closed on something that definitely wasn't a cooking utensil, unless Obi-Wan had taken to searing steaks with his lightsaber, and Quin knew from experience that that was a hard trick to master and not really worth the effort. He pulled the saber out, dislodging a packet of dried legumes in the process, and hefted it in his hand. Something about the grip was wrong -- Obi-Wan's hands weren't big enough for it to be comfortable. It wasn't Obi-Wan's, then.

He glanced back at the door that led to Obi-Wan's sleeping room. They had said so little, and most of what they said was impersonal, on the surface at least. It was obvious that Anakin's death had broken Obi-Wan's heart, but there was something else going on that Quin didn't understand. All of that quiet wisdom, all that certainty... yet it had been Obi-Wan who had reached out, as if he had wanted to stop speaking, as if there were a secret he was afraid he would reveal if he kept on.

He took a deep breath, steeling himself, then activated his telemetric ability and stripped the memories from the saber.

His next conscious thought was that the floor was very hard, and he couldn't feel his arms. He blinked, stretched his hands out in front of him, and got up from his knees.

Quin dropped the lightsaber and covered his face with his hands. They were shaking.

 

V

_i have held back time and tide when all the world was plenty  
now my hands are open wide, open wide and empty_

 

The walk across the Dune Sea gave him plenty of time to think, as did the wait in Mos Eisley for a ship to take him away. He tried to use Jedi meditation techniques to drain away his anger, but the peace and serenity he was looking for slipped away like coins through a gambler's fingers.

He had seen the image of Darth Vader on the HoloNet reports -- "the Sword of the Empire", they called him, or "the Emperor's hound" -- and he had wondered, with a kind of sick fascination, what was behind the mask; he had wondered if it had been a corrupted Jedi or some secret protégé of Palpatine's. It had never occurred to him that it might be both. It had never occurred to him that it might be Anakin. He had known Anakin a little, enough to know that he was prodigiously talented and very difficult for Obi-Wan to train; headstrong, passionate, arrogant, but dedicated and loyal; the kind of student that no one wanted to teach, but everyone wanted to have taught. And of course he had cracks in his personality deep enough for a tempter to drive a wedge into, but the same could be said for Quin, or for any Jedi who had walked close to the line. It might have been almost anyone. It would have been horrible no matter who it was, for all Jedi were one, and the fall of one was the disgrace of all. The galaxy had already tumbled into darkness, and knowing who was responsible made no difference to that.

Yet Obi-Wan had lied to him. It should not have left him speechless and shaking, but it did.

Quin sat in the cantina with an untouched glass of tavek in front of him, listening to the ebb and flow of the patrons' conversations, thinking of what Obi-Wan had said the night before. _We were deceived, because the lie was easier to believe than a truth that would have made us look foolish or weak..._

He knocked back the tavek and left the cantina. At the hangar he met the freighter captain who had offered him passage to Roon. "I can't leave today," he said. "My business here isn't finished after all."

Her eyes narrowed. "I can't delay. I've got to get this shipment out. Unless you want to pay my fine -- "

"No, I can't afford that. I'm sorry."

She shrugged. "Don't be. I don't make my living from passengers. Good luck with your business."

"There's no such thing as luck," Quin said, and he left the hangar.

 

VI

_have you ever held something until your hands were aching?  
and then let it go and watched it fall and listened to it breaking?_

 

The suns were setting as he crested the last dune before Obi-Wan's hermitage. Obi-Wan was sitting outside, watching, something small and metallic cradled in his hands.

Quin sat down beside him. "You were right about the sunsets," he said.

Obi-Wan's hands tensed around the lightsaber, then relaxed. "I thought I knew him," he said, closing his eyes.

Quin thought of Aayla, her courage and her fierce integrity and the way they had pulled each other back from the brink of darkness, and he knew that this was not the same thing. Anakin's memories shifted and roiled inside him, not blending with his own but so vivid as almost to eclipse them. "The Jedi were too close," he said. "Too close to see what was wrong. You were right about that, too." He glanced at Obi-Wan, and the naked pain on his face made his own heart clench in sympathy. "You didn't lie, did you?"

Obi-Wan opened his eyes. He took two ragged breaths before speaking. "No," he said. "I did feel him die. I felt his light go out." He looked down at the saber and his right hand clenched around it. "When I felt it, I thought that meant -- But then I saw Darth Vader on a HoloNet report. And I was _relieved_." He looked at Quin. There were tears in his eyes. "What kind of Jedi does that make me? What kind of _man_?"

Quin opened his mouth to speak, but there were no words for this. He thought of Aayla, and he thought of Anakin, and he reached out and rubbed the back of Obi-Wan's neck with his right hand.

Obi-Wan looked at him, frowning. He said nothing, but the tears dried in his eyes and a small shiver worked its way through his body. He let go of the lightsaber and let his left hand drop into Quin's lap. Quin clasped it tightly.

They sat like that until the last glimmer of sunlight had left the sky. "You should stay the night," said Obi-Wan. His voice was calm and even. "Even on a speeder, it's not wise to cross the desert at night on your own, and on foot it's positively foolish."

"Just one night," said Quin. Obi-Wan nodded and squeezed his hand.

The stars glittered in the sky like diamonds.

[end]

**Author's Note:**

> All things Star Wars belong to George Lucas; however, Quinlan Vos is the creation of John Ostrander (writer for the _Star Wars: Republic_ comics), who deserves a credit of his own.
> 
> Quoted lyrics are from "Faultlines" by [Karine Polwart](http://www.karinepolwart.com), except those in section III, which are from "Resolution Road" by the same artist.


End file.
